By DJ Dolce
After thorough investigations and interrogations of attendees from this year’s Camp Flog Gnaw, I’ve been hearing a lot of new narratives regarding what happened with the mystery headliner, aka ???. For those of you who live under a rock and are therefore unaware of the situation, Tyler decided to trick everyone with Camp’s Day 2 headliner by making it a surprise. Of course, since notorious recluse Frank Ocean recently released two new singles only a week before the festival, In My Room and DHL, fans immediately assumed the mystery guest just HAD to be Frank, especially considering this was his first new releases with since 2018’s cover of Moon River. As someone who didn’t attend Camp, I too was under the impression that Frank could be one of the headliners; but something in me knew that I was simply being naive, for Frank Ocean the Hermit doth not leave his hiding…it was too good to be true.
And indeed, it WAS too good to be true: the last set of Day 2 comes along and the excitement is high in the crowd. Long story short, here’s what went down: according to my sources (aka my friends and roommates), Tyler came out to greet the crowd and asked if he could bring out a friend. Out comes ASAP Rocky. Everyone is stoked. He plays a few songs, and dips off the stage. Tyler comes out again, asks if he can bring out yet another friend. Out comes Lil Uzi Vert. Again, everyone is stoked. So far, so good: seems like a good start to the final set of the festival. After he plays a few songs, he gets off the stage too. Tyler AGAIN asks if he can bring out another friend; at this point in the repetitive performance, everyone is just waiting for Frank, still assuming that he’s the long anticipated ???. But then, Tyler pulls out a real shocker: Drake comes out on stage, an artist not exactly suited for most Flog Gnaw attendees. Everyone is shocked, but not necessarily upset to see him, as they’re not yet aware that HE is in fact the surprise headliner, since neither Drake nor Tyler announced this. After a few songs, Drake asks the crowd “should I keep going?”. The crowd, assuming that there is someone else coming out after him, says “nah”; while there were apparently a genuinely rude area of the VIP section throwing water bottles at Drake, the rest of the audience just really thought there was no way he was the last set and wanted to see the next performer. But alas, he was, and just like that, Camp Flog Gnaw 2019 ended its last set 20 minutes early.
So yes, Drake was told to leave the stage, but just not in the way Twitter thought. Perhaps, had the audience known that Drake was ??? they wouldn’t have had the same reaction. Maybe they would have wanted him to stay. Though Tyler should have been clearer as to who was the mystery headliner during this set, he’s still pissed at everyone who attended Camp (see @tylerthecreator on Twitter) and Drake is super emo about it all (see @champagnepapi on Instagram trying to make jokes to mask his fragile ego). For those who attended this year’s carnival: one of y’all might need to send a strongly worded email to Tyler (and maybe cc Drake to be nice) just to clear up all the mania and confusion.